About a dozen or so years back, I was sitting at a pavement café in The People’s Democratic Republic Of Lao, watching my fingers twitch and convinced I was going to die. I’d just downed a mug of coffee freshly brewed from beans grown up on the hillside. The kind of “artisanal” coffee now worshipped in peculiar rituals by Millennials and their even more peculiar generational offspring. My heart was knocking at my chest, trying to get out. I had the head-sweats. What, I quizzed myself, was in any way good about this? I wasn’t experiencing the mellow lift claimed by the caffeine hounds, nothing pleasantly energising. It tasted like all strong coffee tastes – like four spoons of instant in a small cup. Maybe there were top notes of shade-grown mulberry and hints of licorice, but I was too busy clinging to the edge of the table – and life itself – to notice.
I was haunted by a lingering sense of unease, and gut tremors, throughout the day. Since then, I’ve viewed the entire coffee business as a cult. I do have an espresso machine, which I use occasionally for a cappuccino when I’m feeling a bit above myself. I keep some beans in the fridge, which I grind in a noisy little machine. I also have a cafetiere and a small tin espresso maker from Viet Nam, which I’m sure is available at hip emporia in the West. But these get dusted off maybe once a month at most. My coffee of choice is Nescafé Red Cup, your default instant, a mug of which drunk as the sun rises (over Lao) does what I pay it for – ensures a satisfactory interlude in the House of Ease. That’s what coffee’s for, and what it does supremely well. Red Cup tastes, perhaps surprisingly, like coffee. I’m sure I’m devastating entire hillside tribes by buying it, but sacrifices have to be made.
Tea, now, is something else entirely, and why coffee was chosen over it by a generation priding itself on a discriminating palate is a mystery. Differences in tea flavours are obvious and wide – where coffee is made from coffee beans (duh) tea can be made from any number of sources and still be definitively tea. And where coffee gives you the horse staggers and a gut pummelling, tea encourages a meditative gaze while delighting the palate. In its quiet way, it delivers a palpable lift of the spirit that coffee promises but fails to deliver. It is non-aggressive, tonic, and entirely benign. I had a huge stock of fine Tesco’s tea (don’t laugh – the stuff in the blue cube boxes is non-pareil) which is now exhausted and irreplacable, so I was recently reduced to buying the expat’s poison – Lipton Yellow Label. This is the notorious stuff the French drop into the saucer of a tepid cup of water if you ask for tea. It is coarse and weak at the same time, quite a trick. But I have made it very drinkable by adding a pinch of Oolong tea to the pot. There are many indigenous teas available in Thailand, all cheap and unpretentious and delicious – Pandan leaf is a particular favourite. And if you’re a method fetishist, you can prepare it in a designery glass pot with an inbuilt filter, or drop into a porcelain cup just to watch it unfold like a Chinese paper flower. This means using your front teeth as a filter, but it’s not a dealbreaker.
I’m not a loose leaf snob. A good cup of tea can be made from a good bag of tea (and even, as I’ve discovered, from a bad bag). I microwave a cold pot, topping it up with more tea and water. It’s all good. And sitting with a cup of tea is a great and familiar comfort in a way that downing a high-maintenance coffee just isn’t. A kindly, undemanding drink, brewed rough or sophisticated exactly according to your taste, and not according to the dictates of a “barrista”. Maybe the as yet unborn Generation Alpha will discover it, and create a Tea House cult around it. Who cares?
Can’t you get Yorkshire in Thailand? I feel like sending you an emergency pack up from Singapore. Gong xi fa cai . Nobody, and I mean nobody madam, should be reduced to Lipton’s Yellow Label.
I think coffee is so big because the artisanal trend started in the US, where they don’t drink tea much. If you’ve ever drunk the stuff they serve up in American restaurants and workplaces, it’s easy to see how the cult of the Flat White took hold.
A question HP. When would it ever get cold enough beside the Mekong to ever need to microwave the teapot ?
When the remaining tea in it is cold. I don’t just heat up an empty teapot – that would be silly.
I’m generally in agreement with you and have always been mainly a tea drinker. It’s the first cup of the day and I have maybe 4 or 5 cups throughout the day. That said, I do enjoy a coffee mid morning – it’s non of this artisanal cappalatteristrettomocha stuff though – just straight ahead black from fresh ground beans (I do have a preference for Columbian or Guatemalan though)
Tea of choice is usually M&S Gold teabags or Yorkshire if they run out. Brewed in the cup for 5 mins and then add milk (full fat).
I’ll add a box of M&S teabags to Hawkfall’s care package from here in Singapore. I totally agree that Yellow Label needs to be avoided at all costs.
I’m deep in the sticks here. Maybe Yorkshire is available in Bangkok – but I never go there. M&S, I very much doubt. Thank you very much for the offer of a care package, but my customised Yellow Label is unrecognisable, very drinkable, and a long-term solution. I’d get through a care package in a week!
EDIT: Vietnam, I know. Slopy prrofreading.
You mean rpoofreading. That’s what somebody once wrote who was applying to me for a job as a proofreader. She didn’t get it.
I assumed you’d written Viet Nam because you’re from the sixties.
It’s that crazy Walter Cronkite sound, daddio.
It’s that Jimmy Cliff pronunciation, innit.
When I was a student in Brighton, my landlord, who was as camp as a vicar’s tea party (I did say it was Brighton) used to swear by tea that was two thirds English Breakfast and one third Earl Grey (“it’s what the queen drinks, dear”). Actually, it may have been Assam rather than English Breakfast, but you get the idea. Drunk with milk. I tried it and it was pretty good, although I found it a bit much for multiple cups a day.
I can’t swear that this is actually what the queen drinks. Actually, given the year she’s having, she could be forgiven for taking something a bit stronger at the moment (*mimes raising hand to mouth*).
My granny used to drink that blend – she worked in a grocer’s shop in the late ‘40s and ‘50s and had the opportunity to make small amounts of the blend for herself.
I had my last cup of coffee over a year ago, when I finally accepted, after decades of drinking vats of the stuff that it really didn’t agree with me.
Since when I’ve become a loose leaf tea nerd thanks to the very well marketed Tea Shop in Madrid. Enthusiastic young (always) women encourage you to spend as long as you like sniffing at varieties before you leave the shop 50 or so euros lighter each time. (And every time you get points towards nicely designed free tins to keep your tea in. I’m easily convinced me, and have lots of tins.)
Current faves are 1001 Nights (a mixture of black, green and jasmine with added cardamon), Orient Express (green tea with cinnamon, cloves and orange), Tila Garden (linden tea with apple,mint and lemon). They also produce an excellent mint tea (Polar Mint, marketing again), English Breakfast and Earl Grey. Best of all are the Jasmine Dragon Pearl’s which basically look like rabbit droppings but unfearl into leaves as you watch it brewing and result in the best jasmine tea I’ve ever drunk.
Best of all, the ritual of making this stuff in a little glass tea pot (where you can see this delicious stuff brewing) has helped replaced the desire to make a G&T or whisky on the rocks which I was overly fond of for quite some time. So tea gets my vote (and money).
Tea of course can lead to this.
95 percent of my hot drinks are Tea – coffee is usually reserved for visits to restaurants or if I am out shopping and the reason for that is most restaurants or cafeteria couldnt make a decent cup of tea if their life depended on it. My preferred is good old PG tips – those chimps did a great sales job in my formative years. In fact when I was coming back fron the cinema last night I stopped at the garage as we had run out if tea and the only tea I could get was Yorkshire which was mildly alarming. I too once suffered from those head sweats which was pretty bloody scary at the time.
One last tea related story. Many years back we were trekking the Inca trail and were offered coca leaf tea which helps cure altitude sickness and at same time energises you. It is or was actually banned in the UK. Imagine my surprise then when I looked at the box and discovered that this coca leaf tea was produced by Hornimans in Jersey.
I’m predominantly a tea drinker. Yorkshire teabags mostly for convenience but loose leaf when I’m in the mood for the feel of bone china betwixt me lips.
I am also a bit of a coffee nurd.
Light to middle roasted beans, hand cranked grinder, digital scales, swan necked kettle and an AeroPress are all mustered and employed.
What’s left of the rest of my time I devote to getting hammered on single malt whisky. *
*I fell off the wagon at Yuletide.
Pence, I’m no authority, being virtually teetotal through happenstance. But I’ve known (and lost) good friends for whom the wagon was a real thing, more real than anything else in their lives. Unfortunately the wagon is always less attractive than the view from the window, and seems never to move. I think that’s why passengers fall off, that bloody boring wagon never getting anywhere interesting.
I was being flippant. I’ve gone from dry for almost a year to the occasional glass. I like you and I would imagine everyone who posts here know of have known people who have a disastrous problem with alcohol. My paternal grandfather was an alcoholic. He died from liver disease caused by his drinking. Thankfully It hasn’t been passed down to me, I’m one of the lucky ones in that I can take a drink and then simply stop drinking entirely without batting an eyelid. I bought a bottle at the weekend because I received a letter from the DWP informing me of my impending state pension and I was pleasantly surprised at the amount. It’s not a king’s ransom but it is more than I anticipated so I was overcome with the desire to celebrate. Next Tuesday I will become despite my best efforts sixty six after which I shall simply desist once more.
If we’re talking about the tea plant, your Darjeeling, Assam and so on, rather than other infusions I have drunk about a dozen cups of tea in my life. Which is enough to know I’m never going to enjoy it.
I’ve always thought the place of tea in British culture is extremely weird. Take the dried leaves of a tropical plant, infuse them, perhaps sweeten the results, most often add a small amount of the milk from another mammal, and regard the result of this unlikely sequence as a symbol of Britishness which is so mundane that it is uncommon for a Briton not to participate.
Sorry if that doesn’t quite make sense; I haven’t had my morning coffee yet.
Oh you…*digs Saucepot in chest with outstretched finger*. The cult of coffee has its comical side, of course – I was once in an exhaustingly hip coffee joint in Berlin which ordered me to let the coffee sit for a while ‘to let the flavours develop’. Great if you like cold coffee…and the Oz coffee culture, while frequently absurd, serves up a damn fine cup of coffee.
But being neither a millennial nor a millennial’s offspring I can afford to take a more relaxed view of things. When in Blighty I buy my coffee from millennials, admittedly – the amusingly named Perky Blenders in Leyton – and I like it fine. It’s easy, whether I use stove top or plunger – to make a brew that doesn’t give me palpitations. I’ve just finished my first of the morning, in fact – small stove top cup plus same amount of hot water – and all’s right with the world. It certainly never gives me any reason to want to reach for instant – that would be throwing the baby out with the dishwater.
I like tea fine too, jasmine or Russian Caravan for choice, no milk.
Sainsbury’s decaf tea bags first thing in the morning and last in the evening. Sainsburys instant coffee in a glass of microwaved milk during the day. It’s a latte I guess. I try to avoid the big chain coffee places. McDonald’s and Greggs coffee is under two quid and is fine if I’m out driving.
My experience of McDonalds coffee is entirely negative. Vile stuff that tastes harmful as you force it down your thirsty gullet. That and the unpleasantly, chewily weird texture of their burger buns (*) means I no longer enter their establishments unless truly desperate.
I only turn into a vaguely human entity after the first few sips of my morning coffee. The first of three or four 400ml mugs of the stuff in the course of my day, brewed in a stovetop pot using filtered tap water and taken with semi-skimmed milk. No coffee for me after 6pm.
I find the different styles of coffee in coffee shops both annoying and bewildering. I don’t patronise them.
Can’t remember the last time I drank tea. Pre-Covid, for sure. I don’t dislike it, I just prefer coffee when given a choice. I haven’t been to a good breakfast café for a long, long time. I usually have tea with a FEB (**)
* Moosey!
** Scottish and Irish variants are also available.
One of the more fatuous aspects of the McDonalds experience is their claim that their coffee is ‘barista-made’. Phooey.
A FEB means something quite different in Scotland…….
It’s better than. Starbucks!
I prefer tea in general. Tetley. However a work day needs coffee, during lockdown we were not allowed to use coffee maker at work and I was reduced to picking up a Starbucks brew on the way in, completely disgusting! How stuff this bad got popular I will never know.
* This is after I drink tea at home before leaving house
I’ve only been to Starbucks a few times, and every time the coffee tasted burnt, no matter what the brew. I too am baffled how the chain caught on – must be the “clubby” atmosphere with the armchairs and newspapers. They got that right.
The railway runs on tea rather than diesel. I probably have five huge mugs every day, and I can’t leave the house without having the first. There are many times when a good brew is actually more welcome than alcohol.
Twinings English Breakfast for me, except for the last of the day, when I find Lady Grey nicely sends me off to Nod.
It’s like the Olden Days when you woke up to discover people on the other side of the world had been discussing issues of vital importance whilst you slept the sleep of innocence.
Lipton’s Yellow Label is a cruel French joke, none of them actually drink the foul stuff
Or wake up at unearthly o’clock and having done the crossword decide to check out the Afterword.
I can’t stress how ambiguous I feel about drinking Yellow Label after years of (absolutely justified) disgust. But I guarantee adding Oolong leaves to the pot makes for a very acceptable brew. Yes, the shame lingers, the feeling of betrayal, and I feel better for “coming out” here. What a splendid platform for personal issues this forum is!
I am a philistine. I have always thought tea to be satan’s spit, or at least that made from camelia sinsensis, horrible bitter stuff with an aftertaste of rusty urine. But, these few months, whilst batting off the black dog with chemicals, I have been eschewing my occasional evening alcoholic lay me down, and exploring the wonders of “sleepy tea”. And, by golly, isn’t the non-tea tea market saturated at the moment, with non tea teas for every occasion and withe every ingredient. I have been trying out all the bedtime brands, which all seem to be infusions of passionflower and valerian, with whatsover sweepings were on the factory floor at the time. I think the pukka brand is probably my favourite so far. They also do a decent enough 3 ginger one and a turmeric one for those daytime lulls when a coffee is too late in the afternoon. Of course, there are also many vile and noxious brews, made from all manner of weeds and seeds, but this is a journey of scientific exploration.
Coffee? Unashamedly instant, preferably Douwe Egberts dark, the jars then handy for keeping spices and rices, pasta and pulses. Never quite saw the thrill in all this cult of the barista baloney, but will side with Thep around that, if you have to, Oz is particularly good at making the myth seem possible. Especially in Melbourne, which gave me the bst coffee I have ever drunk, reliably and regularly, the 5 days I was there.
Italy for me. I had better coffee from a petrol station in Sicily than I have ever experienced in any North American establishment
It’s a great shame that when the UK imported a coffee culture it chose the American version of buckets of coffee-flavoured, sweetened milk-froth over the Italian version of cheap espresso for a quick pit stop. I suspect there is an element of the British tendency to think that large volumes of something bad is better value than a small amount of something excellent.. Yes, I realise I have made generalisations about 3 entire countries here, and there will be plenty of exceptions to be found in all of them.
One of the best cups of coffee I’ve ever had was from a vending machine in an office in Bergamo. Some of the worst was in Costa Rica – on a tour of a coffee plantation is was explained that all the good stuff goes abroad.
I also had that experience in Costa Rica. Our group stopped at some roadside place. They were making coffee through a filter that looked like a fragment of some ladies hosiery but it was only doing a couple of cups at a time and the water took an age to drip through. The product itself was weak and rather bitter, a bit like us after waiting so long. There are of course many Americans there. Go figure.
Coffee I think tastes best in the right circumstances, like after a meal, or with something sweet to eat. Maybe with a cognac on the side. Too harsh first thing and one tires of it after too many cups. Tea works better in the afternoon and with breakfast. An espresso is good when you’re on a journey, like with a guided tour and you stop off somewhere wanting a quick fix but not an excess of fluid to fill the bladder. We have a percolator at home, as is traditional in Sweden, and use a slightly more expensive bag of beans that we grind. You have to get the strength right. That’s key. Those machines with pods aren’t up to much in my view. Filter machines and cafetieres are pretty good I reckon.
The Italians do the best coffee, as they do the best everything. Cities, women, art, cars, food, wine. And they do it without the odious, sniffy grandstanding of the French (who have no reason to be proud of anything except a fresh baguette).
I don’t drink coffee, but I do sometimes buy coffee-themed NFTs, which have many of the same properties, but can’t be drunk.
The NFTs allow me to enjoy the caffeine stimulus of coffee, but without the comedown; I consume them digitally, via a dedicated web3 DApp which utilizes multiple blockchains to deliver an authentic experience, at only minimal environmental cost. The gas fees are, admittedly, material, but I expect them to reduce exponentially from some time in Q2 of this year, once proof of stake is implemented.
The critical benefit of this approach is that, while “drinking” my daily coffee, I’m also steadily building a portfolio of high yield digital assets which should serve as an excellent alternative to fiat once the mainstream economy inevitably implodes.
I don’t drink tea. It causes Covid.
National Film Theatres? You buy National Film Theatres? Instead of coffee? Rarely have I been so impressed.
Wait until I tell you what I do instead of lunch.
I’ve struggled to understand the NFT schtick. An American tried to explain it to me to no avail. I get followed on that Twitter by people who do this thing whatever it is and claim to be artists but If it doesn’t involve paper cuts and paint under the fingernails I struggle. It’s about money really I guess. Most things are.
It’s hard to explain via the written word without sounding like a total nutter.
We’re not used to the idea of digital assets having value because, until now, the internet has largely been a free-for-all.
NFTs are presaged on the idea that in 10-15 years time, that won’t be the case. People will spend a growing amount of time in online spaces that seem increasingly physical, and they’ll want to own objects in those spaces, partly as a store of value, partly for status (the same way they currently do physical objects in physical spaces).
Buying an NFT is conceptually no different to buying an original painting. You don’t hold the copyright, you’re in possession of an asset that is easily (albeit more easily) reproduced without any loss of utility, but you’re banking on the unique property of the asset (its verifiable originality) conferring value on it. We’ve had centuries to get used to this concept for the Mona Lisa, but it’s currently novel for digital art.
At the moment, the NFT space is the wild west. A lot of people will be scammed, a lot of people will lose money and there will be boom and bust. But it’s quite possible, and perhaps even likely, that what will eventually emerge from it all, given time, is a set of assets that in future become part of the day to day lives of most people. That’s what a lot of smart people are currently betting on.
So, yeah: it’s about money, and wanting to be where money will be spent in future.
I understand that John “Full Kit” Terry is a major NFT enthusiast. Something to do with monkeys apparently.
Indeed: JohN FTerry, tool of precisely the types of scam artists I’m on about. The whole “Apes” thing he’s involved in appears to basically be a load of celebs inflating a bubble, which will presumably be popped in due course.
Thanks Bingo. You did a better job than the American. I’m left feeling two things about it. As an artist a lot of the challenge and therefore the joy for me is in the making. That practice is the point for me. It’s a sensual thing. It’s very difficult to convey the frisson of it without sounding horrendously pretentious so I’ll leave that there. The other second reaction is I am genuinely pleased that I don’t understand it because I can’t be tempted to get involved with it and plenty of people have tried to convince me I should but it’s not for me. I’ll just continue making marks on paper. I sort of understand that at least a little bit.
The sensual/frisson thing makes total sense to me, and I think that’s something we probably feel to a greater or lesser extent regarding all the areas of our lives that are becoming increasingly digitized; they will have to prise my paper books from my cold, dead hands for precisely that reason.
Weirdly I have absolutely no problems incorporating ebooks or digital streams of music into my life but and it’s a big BUT it has to be as well as not instead of. This is the thrust of the argument that NFT makers use to me. Why not do both? Maybe they have a point but as I said I need to feel physically connected to my work or it just wouldn’t feel like it had any intrinsic value.
“…it has to be as well as not instead of….” This is what I always say to people who fret about ebooks. Nobody’s going to stop them buying actual books, or take the ones they already own away from them.
“…you’re banking on the unique property of the asset (its verifiable originality) conferring value on it…”
Tell that to the movie and music industries…it’s as is Pirate Bay never happened.
You’re thinking in the wrong terms. This is more like digital luxury goods.
I can’t conceivably take anything seriously when it has the word “fungible” in it, which sounds like it’s been made up for the purposes of children’s television.
I’m putting all my money into Wacaday bonds. It’s a sure thing…
Fungible = a party on a zeppelin.
Fungible – you can buy a cream for that…
There’s already an NFT Bay. Someone copied every NFT they could find – it turned out to be 16tb worth – so that anyone could download them from it. There’s a whole bunch of people loosely described as “Right Click Save” who argue the whole NFT concept is a dud, given it’s that easy to copy an NFT. But as Bingo points out, only one person has a verifiable original.
I don’t know why that torrent is so remarkable, apart from the fact that, at 17Tb, it’s extremely unlikely that anyone was dumb enough to waste their electricity downloading the thing.
Collectorism in the digital realm, then.
Collectorism doesn’t make a huge amount of sense to me in the physical realm these days.
(Raises hand with a withering look on his face)
I have no idea what an NFT is, even after reading Bingo’s explanation above. I refuse to google it as I suspect life will seem a tad more absurd and depressing once I do so.
NFT? Does it stand for something? What has it to do with tea or coffee?
It stands for Nu Fair-Trade Tea.
It’s a range of hyper-ethical teabags, using leaves grown at farms owned by dispossessed minorities with large landholdings (LLDMs).
NFTs come in novel flavours and you drink them with minimal milk to counteract the risk of white supremacy.
It’s not like regular tea, which is lashed inexorably to the masts of imperialism. And which causes Covid.
You’re a rascal, Bingo Little.
One stove top pot of Waitrose House Blend beans first thing, makes 2 x mugs with 1/3 warmed milk. After that Clipper tea, orange box preferably. I’ve tried decaf tea but can’t get on with it.
Yeah … decaff tea. Let’s take something out that nobody noticed was in there.
I was getting headaches at the time and thought it might be the caffeine. Turns out it was the job I was doing.
No froth!
There’s a valuable point waiting to be made by Mike Thep here, who witnessed the birth of the frothy coffee bars in the ‘fifties, an independent U.K. no-brand cultural phenom. “Mind you,” he reminisces, “the old Gin Houses were much worse. I’m in that Hogarth etching, y’know …”
Dahn the Shrubbery on Royal Terrace, blowin’ the froff off the froffy coffy, Francoise Hardy on the Scopitone, Marvin on the jukebox…I’m sorry, you were saying?
Jumpers for goalposts …
Strewth. After “investment portfolios” here we have a thread actively encouraging middle-aged men to burble on about poncey coffee. Are we trying to replicate the content in those magazines you used to get on airlines?
What do you mean insulting? I said “middle”-aged, what more do you want?
I’m heading back to the wankers thread. I know my people.
This ^ seems to have been taken as a challenge to actually make this thread even more poncified. You lot think you’re Jimi Hendrix and you’re really Hyacinth Bucket.
For shame.
For shame!
‘The Bouquet residence. Foxy Lady of Red House speaking…’
“It’s pronounced Voodoo Chil-lay , actually”
Mind that crosstown traffic, Richard
The Wind Cries Onslow
Very recently I made an Earl Grey cuppa by mistake, but rather than throw it away and try again I decided to go with it. I found that I really liked it – and it’s now what I order in cafés rather than a coffee. People think I’m reet posh now and women take off their glasses and let their hair cascade down in an alluring way. Even better than that, in some places you can make four cups from one pot if they give you some boiling top-up water in a little steel jug.
Attaboy. Earl Grey is the Ploughman’s Lunch of the tea world, though but, a recent-ish marketing initiative.
I drink three mugs of Twinings English Breakfast tea a day, one in bed while my wife gets ready for work, one mid-afternoon and one after the evening meal.
When I’m writing, I like a small cafetiere of coffee (Nicaraguan, from Origin Coffee in Cornwall) which makes three small cups of coffee, to which I add hot milk. The coffee has become something of a ritual, (even down to the cleaning of the cafetiere afterwards,) which I really enjoy.
Coffee on, laptop open, music on, and I’m ready to write.
At the weekend, if we’re at home, I’ll swap the first cup of Twinings for Fortnum & Mason’s Irish Breakfast Tea which reminds me so much of the tea in Bewley’s, Grafton Street, Dublin, the best tea rooms in the world.
Coffee in America is unadulterated shite, without exception. I’ve drunk coffee in the most expensive hotel in Boston and it was still shite. Yet you can’t say anything – they have no clue how bad their coffee is. I have American musician friends who plan their London touring hotel so that there is a Starbucks within crawling distance, just so they can drink a bucket of their unadulterated shite.
I do not understand it.
Me neither, see above. And Tarbucks is better!
Agreed. Bewley’s, Grafton Street, Dublin, is the best tea rooms in the world.
They is, is they?
This is the sort of post that fires up the Afterword – good on you, Hire Purchase. A high quality, discursive introduction, prompting fireside recollections from senior members, and lightning declarations from young bucks with an imaginative grasp on the modern world beyond the frosted glass of the clubhouse.
As for me, I have converted the sink taps in our kitchen – one pours out a steadily boiled supply of Lapsang Souchong, the other discharges a sticky drip of syrupy blackness that is the perfect blend of Arabica and Robusta – perfect for cleaning the most stubborn of stains off the bottom of my breakfast frying pan.
We’ve done tea before – but not in such a distinguished style as this.
But we still haven’t addressed the central thrust of my argument – the ignorance of tea in the generation that embraced coffee as the hipster’s beverage. Why no pan-global tea version of Starbucks? It’s a far more varied beverage than coffee (limited by definition to the extract of the coffee bean), with all the attendant opportunities for pleasing and expert ritual of preparation, exotic sources, “guest” brews and so on.
Good point. The boy doesn’t like tea, coffee or even hot chocolate. When I was his age we gulped down mug after mug of PG Tips and Maxwell House. It was a complete revelation to me when I had a decent cup of coffee.
Evidence of the collapse of British society includes the fact that workmen and builders don’t drink tea any more, but subsist on those foul-smelling energy drinks that should have come and gone in the 90s but are still unaccountably a thing.
This simply must not be true. You’ll be telling me next they don’t have paint-spattered portable wirelesses.
In Canada we have “David’s Tea” (maybe US too?), they closed quite a few locations fairly recently though
https://locations.davidstea.com/
I thought I’d cracked it when I found they did a tea that included coffee beans. It actually tasted good. They had a shop at Toronto airport and a bigger outlet in the USA at the mall just outside Niagara Falls. Hugely expensive though and I’ll admit my initial enthusiasm waned.
replying to HP
Coffee is surely the drink of choice for the ADHD generation, the constantly distracted dopamine hunters, kept awake for hours beyond reason in an accelerating hybrid world piping information into every one of our senses.
“Piping information” – always tune your drones first…
Good point, well made, Sal. Coffee jitters are the beverage equivalent of swiping through memes. A cup of tea is settling down with a good book.
Scottish Blend or Tetley tea bags here with breakfast or occasionally when I have fish and chips. Half a teaspoon of sugar and no milk. Weak too. Yon builder’s tea has me running to the loo almost immediately.
I’ve had a nesspresso espresso machine for about 20 years. I like a double espresso after lunch with a biscuit or a piece of cake(my other half works in a cake shop). I don’t think I have ever experienced any physical effects from coffee. Maybe I don’t make it strong enough. I do like the taste though.
Water’s my thing though. Probably 10 cups a day.
A FEB means something quite different in Scotland…….
Sigh. Another of HP’s needlessly provocative posts. Tea better than coffee? Oh don’t make me larf! Tea, as any fule know, is akin to wombat urine, whereas the quest for the perfect cup of coffee is one of life’s ultimate goals – sometimes glimpsed but often never attained. An espresso machine, coffee grinder, 4 cafetières – count ‘em – specialist cups and saucers (oh yes), beans, grounds, and yet the search goes on.
Tea better than coffee? *Chokes on grade 8 Columbian bean*
My hands are now itching to wrap lovingly around my Timemore Slim Plus. There are only sixteen clicks to heaven.
*Swoons*
I am not rising to this very obvious bait, Boney, as your tastes seem to embody everything bitter and hateful about this world in which we live in.
I like both coffee and tea very much. I definitely drink more coffee, but we’re only talking maybe 3-4 cups a day. Black, sugarless, filter. I only like espresso in two forms: as espresso, or (once in a blue moon) as cappuccino. Nowhere does the latter quite like Italy, but I’ll settle for anything that’s not Starbucks (weirdly sweet, even when unsweetened, coffee scented milkshakes) or Costa (see Starbucks, but burnt-tasting).
The best high street coffee to my tastebuds used to be Coffee Republic, but it went the way of the dodo yonks ago. Now it’s black Pret filter, which has the added advantage of being cheap.
Tea: Yorkshire Gold, the colour of an antique desk even after the (tiny splash) of milk is in. I have maybe two of these a week. Or else black earl grey, or black lapsang. The trick with black tea is to just show the (boiling) water the teabag for a few seconds, then whip it out, or else it’s bitter.
I think for me, coffee is the necessary and delicious fuel of the daily round. Tea is more of a treat: I know I’m relaxing if I’m having a brew.
No whipping it out, please. This is a gentleman’s tea room, not a Soi Cowboy bar.
I’m a dunk-it-in and whip-it-out lad too, although it’s got to be slightly less than boiling water (or previously boiled). Can’t stand strong tea, especially black. In theory that means you can get several cups of tea out of one teabag (a trick I learned in Colditz) but I always forget.
That’s only for black tea. If I’m having a regular brew with milk, it’s got to be builder’s, and a deep brown. My Yorkshire Gold choice is based on the fact that if you let it mash a good while, it’s the most glorious teak colour when you add your tiny splash of milluk.
My late uncle used to drink 30-40 cups of tea a day
Tom Baker’s mother would have approved, or possibly been jealous. In his autobiography he writes that hi mother could drink 30 cups a day and received the news that a neighbour drank 33, the age of Jesus at his crucifixion, she received the news with tight lips.
Good job Jews don’t apply that logic. Moses lived to 120.
Did you get that from the Guinness Book Of Records?
No, that’s what he was doing when the police stopped him.
Oho!
Damo doesn’t mind which…
…or a deckchair covered in custard, he won’t notice.
I drink both – usually coffee in the morning, either French press if I have beans (usually Whittards breakfast blend or French blend) or a Lavazza pod if I don’t. Shift to tea in the afternoon and evening, Whittards TGFOP leaf tea for preference, or jasmine tea for something lighter. Not sure about the deckchair/custard interface…
I drink both. I make a large glass jar of half caff with 50/50 Taylor’s medium coffee and their decaf. Tastes great and much easier on the nerves.
Love tea – we like Clipper, not least because they are actually properly compostible – many of the main brands have plastic in the bag and shouldn’t be on your compost heap or food bin. Just sipping a nice mug now in front of the newly lit fire.
Rington’s bags are now compostible. I think Yorkshire have made the change too. It turns out that you don’t have to have plastic in absofuckinlutely everything, who knew?
Big fat Lavazza to start the day. Russian Caravan tea throughout the day; ad lib, but at least three or four across the hours. A milky Douwe Egberts instant to round off the afternoon. A straight pint of Samuel Smith’s Double Chocolate Stout for the early evening, and a couple of fingers of malt for the drooping eyelids hour.
Therefore, on a statistically viable basis, tea wins.
Coffee smells absolutely delish but I cannot stand the taste of it in any form. It’s tea for me: nowt fancy, just M&S Empress Grey or, if I can’t get my hands on that, Twining’s Lady Grey. Earl Grey’s fine too. I drink about 6 cups a day.
That’s interesting – I drink coffee, I’ve tried many ways of preparing it – I like the taste: but I’ve never managed to get it to taste quite as good as it smells when I’m grinding the beans…triumph of hope over experience again…
There is nothing to equal the heady aroma bursting from a freshly-opened bag of Nescafé Red Cup!
Indeed: but does the flavour of the brew match the “heady aroma” of the freshly-opened bag – or is it all about the anticipation?
*Taps nose* AeroPress.
Oho! I need to try it again – it was consigned to the outer darkness after a rather messy and potentially dangerous accident…
It is written that everyone who uses one has at least one messy mind slip. As you know it’s versatility is a strong point so you need to experiment with it until you find a brew you like.
I use mine to brew loose leaf tea in as well as coffee. I just use a metal filter instead of paper. Easy to use, immensely versatile, simple to clean and cheap. I think it’s a masterpiece of modern design.
Without wishing to start a Lilliput and Blefuscu war, do you brew in the Aeropress with the filter up or down?
Yes the messy mistakes, coffee over the work bench, transferring hot coffee from one cup to the other, fishing the filter from the bottom of the cup etc.
Ah the inverted or non-inverted conundrum. I’ve tried both methods and although the inverted method does undoubtedly give a person more control over the brewing and stops early dribbling I can honestly say that I haven’t experienced any noticeable advantage in terms of taste so I just use it as God intended. I do use two paper filters though for a cleaner cup. I don’t bother wetting them first as again it doesn’t offer any noticeable advantage that I’ve detected.
Ground size, water temperature and brew time seem to be the most crucial factors. OOAA.
Another AeroPress fan here. Makes the best coffee I’ve had at home so far.
No. Better coffee if steam/very high temperature water contacts the ground coffee rather than lower temperature water that is spending too much time in contact with the coffee.
I have one of these, makes espresso on a stove top and then dilute with boiling water for an Americano if you want
I use a Bialetti almost all of the time, and an AeroPress maybe once or twice a month when I want a mug (and when travelling – even upmarket hotels only supply one of those pod machines in the rooms at best), but I’m against watering down. I’d do it for guests if they request it of course, and I do like my coffee strong, but I hate it that so few coffee shops can serve a cup or mug of black coffee. An espresso watered down to make an Americano is not the same thing at all.
Thirded on the Aeropress. I use mine in the office. Well, I used to use mine in the office – may have to dust it of soon. It’s also a really good thing to take on holiday as it really does make a decent cup of coffee.
I use an Aeropress daily, but have no idea what you both are talking about. It’s just a case of pull back syringe, insert powder, add hot water, cover with filter and cap, place over mug and push down. Isn’t it?
If you invert the plunger, place the other section on top, add the coffee and boiling water before screwing the filter cap on, and the invert the whole lot onto a mug when the coffee has brewed, then, but only then, do you have very slightly less seepage but a vastly increased risk of the two sections coming apart and spilling boiling coffee over a wide area.
I’ve never had any problems with the two coming apart using the inversion method.
“I’ve never had any problems with the two coming apart using the inversion method.”
Pleased to hear it.
Coffee. Milk in first, water off the boil. Amirite?
I like coffee. I like tea. Is this a zero sum game? Or as Xi Jinping says, we can have a win-win situation?
Australians like to claim their coffee is the best in the world. I’m not so sure. After visiting Vietnam I bought one of their low tech ‘Phin’ coffee filters for $5 and now start my day in Sydney with a small glass of strong Vietnamese ground coffee with a spot of condensed milk. For the rest of the day, Yorkshire tea [bags], although since I come from Leeds I would prefer Ringtons, if they still made it.
Australian “coffee” is a by-product of Vegemite processing.
You’ve obviously never been to Australia. If you had, you’d know that Vegemite is a by-product of the rendering knackered horses into glue industry.
Everything is a by-product of the Vegemite process in Oz. Clothing, sheep dip, beer, diesel fuel, wound dressings, roofing materials, and meat.
Well you say that…
Ringtons is still available, it appears there is a warehouse not far from me.
Just about to make my morning cuppa, loose tea in a metal egg tea holder at the same time preparing my coffee in my Aeropress to be drunk later.
We get Rington’s. It’s bloody good, especially the loose leaf.
This is a Ringbinder reference.
The one time I tried Vietnamese coffee with condensed milk in it, I backed away fast…
Carnation is the Thai National Foodstuff. You see tins of it piled up on drinks carts – your guarantee of a tasty and nutritious beverage! And why not add it to bread for a zesty snack?
You’ll have been waiting for my thoughts on the matter.
I refer you to my representatives, below
To balance your jive, enjoy a cup of the brown stuff.
Something to hum, while you glug down a brew, trying to shift that annoyingly bouncy bit of Corsair at the bottom of the can.
I’m sure I’m not the only Afterworder who uses a Jedward mug and placemat.
I have a mug that says TEA on it so I can’t put coffee in it, that would be wrong.
I also have a Barry Wom mug bought from Barry at a Rutles gig and he told me it mustn’t be used for coffee either. I haven’t.
Is Jedward your pool boy, Gar?
No, that’s Enrico. Jedward is a multi pop star fraternal celeb. He/it/they/other* won something or other, I’m almost sure, and their very best songs sound like Taylor Swift’s very worst songs, I think (but can’t really say with any reliable authority having not heard them).
*delete as inclined
That mug is a tease – it’s probably nothing like as much fun as pouring boiling water intio Jedward’s heads would be.
I like both. Your point about the variety of tea is fair. You do get a greater variety of drinks with coffee though.
Tea wise, loose tea is best but I don’t have the time mostly. TeaPigs Everyday or Strong Earl Grey are my preferred tea bags – with a solid 5 min brew time. In a hurry – Yorkshire Tea bags. Brewed strong, a reasonable amount of milk and half a sugar. Preferably in my Cath Kidston mug with dogs on.
Coffee wise, I like a black coffee , fresh gound and espresso based. Either an espresso or a a couple of long shots topped up with hot water. Both with sugar. Made in a relatively cheap (sub £200) Melitta bean to cup machine. It needs regular cleaning and descaling but is very good at what it does. I don’t recall having a bad coffee in Germany so I trust Melitta to be good at coffee and well made.
I especially enjoyed this: “relatively cheap (sub £200)”.
That’s cheap as chips for a bean to cup machine. Think of it as two months of buying a Starbucks a day.
I just can’t. Or won’t.
It’s interesting that, like a thread on music choice, there seem to be very few sub threads. I can’t be the only one that read some of the posts above and thought ‘No, that’s just wrong!’ but we’ve generally allowed it to ride.
I personally can’t abide tea. I hate the smell. The Earl Grey that my wife drinks is even worse! I have tried fruit teas etc but I’d rather just have a glass of water!
Coffee is my tipple. Just three mugs a day. The first and the last are ‘proper’ caffeinated’ cups made with a simple filter over a mug. And the mid morning cup is decaf made the same way. The Sainsburys Columbian decaf beans taste almost like the real thing.
I don’t have the same sneering distain for the chain coffee shops as some but I really don’t like Costa and I’m looking forward to the time (hopefully soon) when we’ll be able to put our own milk in again – some baristas seem to think ‘just a dash’ means half a pint!
Pretty sure I’m on record on the AW as stating that my take is thus: tea is the preferred beverage of civilised folk worldwide & coffee is essentially for maniacs.
The finest cup of coffee in the world can’t hold a candle to a merely decent cuppa. It really is a matter of the taste – tea is delicious in all its myriad forms, whereas coffee is a flavour one can grow to tolerate or perhaps even enjoy because it accompanies the buzz that addicts crave.
Coffee is basically a socially acceptable version of speed. Nasty & cranky and definitely has its uses, but ultimately not very kind to its habitual users, & certainly not something to be justified for the flavour.
I probably drink 4 or 5 mugs of tea a day, & if I need a booster, I’ll go for a strong ‘mid morning brew’ loose leaf mix from my local market, which has a decent caffeine dose, but doesn’t taste foul.
I can go weeks between coffees- Colombian brewed in the trusty Aeropress, & really reserved for going out to evening football games or the occasional gig after a day at work, in anticipation of likely flagging later on. Then I make it Greek style, really strong & accompanied by a long glass of water. It’s OK to drink, but it’s all about the janky buzz that will see an evening out.
Truth be told, I could forgo all drinks – including red wine & whisky – but never tea.
I guess I’m not really on the fence on this topic, am I?
Not on the fence, but we’re definitely in the same garden. If coffee was a person, you’d never sit down with them. Shouty, bad listener, bad breath, irritable, impatient, and always knocking stuff over. Tea, on the other hand, is a delightful companion. Polite, considerate, a sympathetic and encouraging listener, superbly relaxed, and elegant.
….and, best of all, gone in about three minutes.
I like both but tea must take the prize. There is something wonderfully random about a cup of tea: just doing your standard brew, it can vary between average and fabulous. A great coffee will never match the joy of getting one of those outstanding cups of tea, when it seems like a gift to yourself and you don’t really know how you did it.
The difference between the two beverages as pianists.
Tea is Russ Conway.
Coffee is Keith Jarrett.
Tea is Debussy, coffee is Mrs. Mills.
Tea is Bill Evans, coffee is Little Richard.
(ectect.)
Coffee is Leonard Cohen, tea is Susan Boyle.
Coffee is John Bonham; tea is Steve Gadd
Both excellent in the correct context…
Tea is like somebody really good-looking and clever and nice relaxing in a splendid lounge overlooking the bay and coffee is a stinking old homeless bum lying in a pool of his own body waste.
And which one do you prefer again?
Depends on mood. Right now I’d give that toothless tramp a good time on the back seat of my Prius.
As guitarists:
Tea is Ry Cooder
Coffee is Noel Gallagher
As shoes:
Tea is brogues.
Coffee is Nikes.
As Nikes:
Tea is a ‘77 Blazer
Coffee is an Air Max 90
I own both and they’re both excellent.
Well you’re just making yourself look a tad foolish now, because a blazer, whenever it was made, is a type of jacket and Nike don’t make them. You’re probably thinking of Dunlop Green Flash.
Blazers?
Fuckin’ BLAZERS?
What is this, the fuckin’ 1922 Committee?
This thread has got me thinking a great deal.
I don’t drink coffee but I will eat coffee flavoured ice-cream and coffee-flavored Revels. I’ll drink tea if a minion makes it, but I wouldn’t want tea-flavoured ice-cream or tea-flavoured Revels.
So.
Indeed, tea flavoured tiramasu I don’t think so.
This is because coffee is in itself just a flavouring. “Coffee” is a coffee-flavoured beverage. A taste-bud tart, ready to spread itself on anything that stays still long enough. Tea is integri-tea. SWIDT? Integrity – integri-TEA!
But as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon said ‘All Propertea is Theft’
To complete your quote: “Le bon thé est un vol, car c’est la boisson des Dieux. En le buvant, nous participons au divin.”
About a quarter past three.
A l’eau! C’est l’heure!
As it’s Steve Marriott’s birthday today, have this song to coffee, with of course a mention of tea.
I’ve “done a Dai” and laboriously collated all the votes into this handy cut out n’ keep results chart:
Tea – 22
Coffee – 13
“Like them both equally” – 6
So! Tea wins the popular vote, and the basic thrust of my argument is ratified and enters legislation.
Erm…I think it has it go through the select commitTEA stage first.
Just to add a fresh input of caffeine to this thread.
Without coffee quite probably the British music scene would be a lot different.
https://darrensmusicblog.com/2020/03/08/visit-to-the-birthplace-of-british-rock-n-roll-the-2is-coffee-bar-soho/
It would have been a more staid and definitely less exciting if it had started in a teashop. Just ask Miss Blennerhassett
Mike Thep was there, sipping froffy coffys with Neddy Studly, Percy Bona, Teddy Tempest, Dickie Daynger, and the rest of the Larry Parnes stable that made (*cough*) British Rock n’ Roll such a viscerally exciting and massively influential scene back in the Bakelite Era.
Such bliss. The first cup of dawn char from the humble urn that passed my saharian lips, courtesy of the saintly Jayji. Never mind the frosty gloom and yobbo seagulls, for yea, I was supping Soma in Svarga Loka!
Om Shantea
As for coffee, my second choice esteemed beverage after tea, it really has to be the real ground deal, or failing that/for ease of convenience, Waitrose Columbian. Served in my Twin Peaks mug, ideally.
Are you up to solids yet, Rob? Good to see you survived. (Really.)
Cheers Retro. I’m now on soft food/small bite size. Nothing too chewy yet, and when I can upgrade to a more normal diet, it’ll be temporary as RT will mean soft again. Plus, I will need some more dental work/reconstruction as well. The finishing line is this summer, and I can’t wait to get stuck into all the outstanding maintenance that needs doing around the place.
Pleased to see you’re slowly mending Rob.
Thanks Pencil. Getting one step further everyday. Staying focused and positive. I’m waiting for a Bebop Deluxe anthology cd to arrive. That’ll be on my Sony Walkman CD player as I venture out to briefly forage for extra tasty and nutritious comestibles later.
All the best Rob, hope for a speedy recovery.
Thanks Hubes. I’m reclining on my bed as I type, ensconced in my deliciously cozy pinstripe dressing robe, sipping Waitrose Gold. There are no bees in this cockpit today.
“Bees in the cockpit” – is that an STD, Robert? Did the ointment work?
Strictly need to know for the initiated, and nowt to do with a dose of crotch crickets on account of an infestation in one’s Peruvian Pube Chimes, old son.
*Taps side of nose* Say no more. SAY NO MORE!
All the best for your recovery Rob. Don’t be a stranger round these parts.
Thanks Boney.
‘The Waitrose Gold,
The fine Devonian’.
Make elevenses a wonderful thing.
So, as this thread bestrides the threshold of Corsair bis, what recommendations for sleepy tea? I like, as said aeons back, the non tea herbal brews of a bedtime. Trying to find one that tastes other than an acceptable gulp, tho. Suggestions. Pukka probably narrowly my current 5 green squares.